Solidarity with 5 Palestinian children - tortured and caged by Israel for a crime that never happened

As part of our continued campaign of Global Solidarity Action for the Hares Boys which is taking place across about a dozen countries, a second London action is on 8th November. More info on the Global Solidarity Action: http://www.inminds.com/pdf/Call-for-Global-Solidarity-for-Hares-Boys-25thOct.pdf

SAUDI ARABIAN AIRLINES

We will protest outside Saudi Arabian Airlines in London to show our disgust at the Saudi regimes collusion with Israeli apartheid, in particular its latest instalment with the awarding of this years Hajj contract to G4S, a company guilty of complicity in the torture and caging of young Palestinian children at Israels notorious children dungeons at Al Jalame - including the 5 Hares Boys who are still languishing in a G4S secured Israeli dungeon today. Women prisoners are equally abused at Israel's G4S secured HaSharon prison.

Saudi Arabian Airlines itself has awarded G4S what G4S describes as "one of the longest running contracts.. a key contract which has expanded year-on-year". As an example of this, at our last protest outside Saudia all the security we encountered wore G4S insignia..

The Saudi regimes collusion with G4S is not new, it first awarded the Jeddah Metro contract "to assist with security during the hajj pilgrimage" to G4S in 2011 and every year since then it has again continued awarding G4S the Hajj contract. And since 2011 G4S's presence in the Holy Land has grown as its Saudi managing director Khalid Baghdadi put it "We are currently riding a wave of security in Saudi with the potential in this area growing by leaps and bounds.". They have cornered 65% of the cash business with armed security officers and armoured vans serving seven main banks with 141 cash packing centres and servicing 4700 atms. They provide manned services with dogs for King Abdullah University, the new industrial cities along the Red Sea and also provides security for the expanding gold mining industry.

G4S - HARES BOYS

On 14th March 2013 in what appears to have been a car accident when a speeding illegal Israeli settler car crashed in to the back of an Israeli truck which had stopped to change a flat tire, on a illegal Jews-only road in the West Bank, resulted in four people being hurt. At the behest of angry settlers, the incident was later presented as an attack by Palestinian stone throwing youth.

The truck drivers earlier testimony that he had stopped due to a flat tire was replaced with the new reason being that he had seen stones by the road, and an accident that nobody saw suddenly became a terror attack with 61 witnesses including the police!

Over the next few days over 50 masked Israeli soldiers with attack dogs stormed the local village of Hares in the early hours of the morning and in waves of violent arrests kidnapped the children of the village. In total 19 children were taken to the infamous G4S secured children's dungeon at Al Jalame and locked up in solitary confinement for up to 2 weeks in filthy windowless 1m by 2m cells with no mattress. The children were violently tortured and sexual threats were made against the female members of their families in order to coerce confessions from the boys.

With the confessions and the new “eye-witness” statements, five of the Hares boys were charged with 25 counts of attempted murder each, even though there were only four people in the car. Apparently the military court had decided that 25 stones were thrown, each with an "intent to kill". The five boys - the "Hares Boys" - Ali Shamlawi, Mohammed Kleib, Mohammed Mehdi Suleiman, Tamer Souf, and Ammar Souf are currently locked up in another G4S secured facility - Megiddo prison where G4S provides the entire central command room.

With no evidence of a crime the military court keeps on postponing the hearing dates for the children. All the October military court dates were cancelled and new ones for November (two this week and one next week) and December issued by the Israeli military to the families of the boys, meanwhile the boys remain caged now for nearly 8 months now. Not that evidence, or lack of it, has any bearing in an Israeli military court - a study conducted by the Israeli NGO 'No Legal Frontiers' over a 12 month period concluded that 100% of Palestinian children brought before the military court are convicted. If the five boys are convicted they will be locked up for over 25 years - five young lives ruined with no evidence of a crime let alone their guilt.

We are demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all the children and hold G4S complicit in Israel's crimes, particularly in the torture of Palestinian children.

Leaflet (text side)

Live updates during protest

We will, inshAllah, be tweeting live (hash tags #FreeHaresBoys #ShameOnSaudi ) from the protest with live photos being uploaded to our twitter and facebook page. So if you can't join us on the day, please help us by sharing the photos as they get uploaded.

The Palestinian Prisoners Campaign aims to raise awareness for the plight of Palestinian prisoners and build solidarity for their struggle and work towards their freedom. The campaign was launched by Innovative Minds (inminds.com) and the Islamic Human Rights Commission (ihrc.org) on the occasion of Al Quds Day 2012 (on 17th August 2012), since then we have held actions every fortnight in support of Palestinian prisoners, if you can spare two hours twice a month then please join the campaign by coming to the next action.

"You cannot simplify the question of violence.. You look at human history - the American revolution, the civil war, the end of slavery in the United States, the African National Congress, the end of colonialism - by and large these were some combination of popular social uprisings and social movements and non-violent protests AND armed resistance. Now that doesn't mean I'm advocating for any armed action today, I'm not. I'm committed to finding ways of acting and speaking and making people laugh and doing art and disrupting the war machine in other ways, but I think focusing on violence when we have the comfort of being protected by mass of armed violence is not non-violence at all.. if you are pointing to the mass of violence and who's doing the mass of violence in the world today, you have to look to state violence - that's people bombing whole cities from the air.. "